Mike
Investor, Creator of HiddenSmallCaps
AI labs will need advanced gene editing to address many of the diseases they pursue, making Prime Medicine's strategic importance hard to overstate as they expand into biology. Cystic fibrosis is a sizable indication; demonstrating the technique works there could open larger indications. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Prime Medicine looks unusually inexpensive relative to its platform at a roughly $570 million market cap. Bristol Myers Squibb's deal includes over $3.5 billion of potential milestones, six times that value, plus royalties, and gives Prime a route into cancer and immunology; their value depends on success, timing and costs. Prime editing can make all 12 single-letter DNA substitutions and insert or delete DNA, and its first CGD patients reached 69% and 83% functional neutrophils by day 30. x.comÂ
Prime Medicine's stock should start to move once more pipeline data comes in, building on amazing technology and early results in a rare immune disease showing quick fixes. More programs are coming, and its cash runway lasts until 2027. x.comÂ
Prime Medicine will trade on hype and fumes until it shows positive clinical data, likely not before sometime in 2027, because it is still a Phase 1 company. Its technology reads as almost too good to be true, but genomics has many promising players and it is hard to know now who will win, which favors a broad genomics ETF over a single name. x.comÂ
Genomics is likely one of the most important long-term investment themes of the next decade, as AI speeds how life's information is read, understood and edited. Picks: Illumina in sequencing; Tempus AI for AI with genomic data; CRISPR Therapeutics and Beam in gene editing; uniQure (high risk, high payoff) and BioMarin (more certain) in gene therapy; Natera and Guardant Health in diagnostics; Twist Bioscience and Thermo Fisher in tools; Vertex and Alnylam in therapeutics. x.comÂ
AI biotech names such as Tempus AI, Recursion, Ginkgo Bioworks and Prime Medicine could become the new home for money rotating out of AI and semiconductor leaders, with Moderna and Merck's positive phase 3 melanoma results for their mRNA neoantigen therapy a possible catalyst. Sentiment toward AI in healthcare should be far warmer than toward job-displacing AI, since everyone faces disease, and could top the semis trade. Indices could chop or fall while these biotechs outperform. x.com x.com … Show more
Prime Medicine and Beam Therapeutics show yellow flags, if not red, in their shared founder and IP dispute, even though prime editing is one of this century's most critical technologies. The same academic scientist helped found both yet stayed at his university rather than run either full time. Now the two companies are in arbitration over IP and contractual rights. Something may be missing here, and hopefully is, but these are not green flags. x.comÂ
Genomics is quietly coming back to life. Moderna's personalized cancer vaccine with Merck succeeded in a Phase 3 melanoma trial, sending Moderna up almost 100% in a day. The ecosystem spans sequencing (Illumina, PacBio, Thermo Fisher, Agilent), gene editing (CRISPR, Intellia, Beam, Prime), gene therapy (uniQure), tools (Twist, Danaher, Qiagen, Bio-Techne, 10x), diagnostics (Natera, Guardant) and therapeutics (Lilly, Regeneron, Vertex, Moderna, BioNTech, BioMarin, Roche). x.comÂ
The biotech and genomics boom is best owned broadly, because single biotech stocks are binary bets on trial results no analyst can handicap. One failed readout can halve a stock, as Novo Nordisk's lost market value on disappointing data showed. Owning blue-chip biotech and high-beta genomics as diversified baskets captures the funding rebound, the AI drug-discovery tailwind and the re-rating after years of deep bear market and a decisive breakout, without the single-molecule lottery. x.com x.com … Show more
Prime Medicine's management has made a mess of the business case. Deprioritizing the CGD program, along with a CEO change and layoffs, was net negative: a proof point paired with a program cut hurt the platform's credibility, made investors question management's vision and killed the investment narrative. That raised the cost of capital, since new equity at $3 is far more dilutive. The editing tech is brilliant, but with founder Liu staying at the university, the business is unconvincing. x.com … Show more
ClearPoint Neuro has many irons in the fire beyond uniQure, one of its 60+ partners, which still has a decent probability of BLA acceptance in November. Neurona's MTLE drug and Parkinson's partners are enrolling, and gene and cell therapy delivered into the brain is not going to slow down. x.comÂ
